How ChatGPT got its name: The ‘late-night discussion' and what it means
, now widely recognised by many as the chatbot that kicked off the
generative AI
boom, almost had a very different name. According to
executives, it was a 'late-night decision' just before its viral 2022 launch that led the Microsoft-backed company to simplify its chatbot's moniker from the difficult 'Chat with GPT-3.5' to the now-iconic 'ChatGPT.'
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On a recent OpenAI podcast, Nick Turley, head of ChatGPT, and Mark Chen, research chief, shared insights into the crucial days leading up to the chatbot's public launch. Turley revealed that the decision to rename the product was made just the day before its late 2022 launch.
'It was going to be Chat with
GPT-3.5
, and we had a late-night decision to simplify' the name, he stated on the podcast.
'We realised that that would be hard to pronounce and came up with a great name instead,' Turley explained.
They ultimately settled on ChatGPT, an abbreviation for 'generative pre-trained transformer.'
Two things that OpenAI executives focused before launching ChatGPT
Before ChatGPT's launch, few within OpenAI anticipated the impact the name would have. Andrew Mayne, the podcast host and OpenAI's former science communicator, noted that the chatbot's core capabilities were largely similar to its predecessors.
The key differentiators were primarily a more user-friendly interface and, critically, its new, memorable name.
'It's the same thing, but we just put the interface in here and made it so you didn't have to prompt as much,' Mayne noted.
Soon after its launch, ChatGPT rapidly gained traction attracting millions of users worldwide.
'We've had so many launches, so many previews over time, and this one really was something else,' Chen added. For Chen, ChatGPT's success marked a personal milestone: 'My parents just stopped asking me to go work for Google,' he said.
ChatGPT's success has spurred a wave of competition, with numerous rivals, including
Meta AI
, Google's Gemini and DeepSeek, emerging in the expanding AI landscape.
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